The Crossover,
the 2015 Newbery Medal winner, offers powerful lessons for writers of all ages. At a recent meeting of the Children’s Book Guild in Washington, DC, Kwame Alexander
shared craft insights related to his novel in verse, which I then shaped
into the following three writing prompts:
1. UP YOUR LANGUAGE GAME:
Read aloud some hip-hop basketball poems (“Dribbling,” “The Show,” “Man
to Man,” “Show-off,” “The Last Shot”).
Classroom Writing:
Have students write down the words and elements (line breaks,
capitalization, font-size changes, rhymes, onomatopoeic words) that make this
poem look and sound like a game of basketball.
Why might the author have made these choices? Ask students to close their eyes and picture
themselves playing a sport or doing an activity they love (soccer, ballet,
hiking, painting, playing a musical instrument), then jot down words that
remind them of this sport/activity and how it makes them feel to do it. Ask them to write a poem or paragraph that
captures (through sound, capitalization, font-change, line breaks, etc.) the
way this sport/activity moves. The final
line or sentence might be how they feel doing it.
2. WHAT’S IN A NAME:
Main character Josh Bell talks about his nickname in four poems (“Josh
Bell,” “How I Got My Nickname,” “At First,” “Filthy McNasty”). What’s the nickname and who gave it to him? How does he feel about it at first? Why does he change his mind? How does he feel the nickname fits him in the
last poem of those four?
Classroom Discussion:
Ask students if they have a nickname.
Is it a shortening of their real name?
A characteristic? How do they
feel about it? Has that feeling changed
over time?
Classroom Writing:
Ask students to write a name (could be an actual name or a nickname)
that they would like to be called. Why
does this name fit them better, perhaps, than their real name? (This could be a paragraph or a poem.)
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Newbery
winner Kwame Alexander and librarian Deborah Taylor, honored this year by ALA.
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3. WHO’S IN YOUR LIFE?:
Kwame thanked Deborah Taylor for
suggesting, early in his career, that he write about a father, like his
own, who is a strong influence on a
young main character. (Deb was in
the audience and is the recipient of the
2015 Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. She works at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in
Baltimore, Md., and has been a beloved literacy advocate and mentor for teens.)
Classroom Discussion:
Have students discuss Josh’s father.
Josh includes many details about Dad so that readers get a clear sense
of his personality. What does he like to
do? (Give advice about basketball to his
sons, tell stories and puns, eat salty foods.)
How does Josh feel about him? Can
students find the italicized words that Dad actually speaks? What does he say?
Classroom Writing:
Ask students to think of someone in their life that they would like to
write about. Have them jot down what
this person likes to do and eat, their favorite words or phrases, and something
that the student and this person have done together and how student feels about
that. (This might be a poem or piece of
prose.)
MORE DETAILS ABOUT KWAME:
Click here for Abby McGanney Nolan’s interview with Kwame in the KidsPost section of the Washington Post.
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